Chapter 20
She turns the camera on.
Having had a part in some of the new looming FMCA updates, we wanted to cover our bases on likely changes of procedure in the future instead of having to do them retroactively.
And so, as was discussed on our walk to the cabin it was time for Joselyn and me to shake hands with our genitals. This was the true purpose of our venture into the woods. Which had done its job, within an afternoon, maybe 6 hours, I had reduced to a quarter of my size, dwarfed by the enormity of the forest. We were to complete an esoteric exercise known to increase profits, and if the energies were directed accordingly, the receiver would thrive. Which turns out is exactly why corporations are treated as a person in the eyes of the law. The claim is that it’s for tax purposes, but really it’s because it’s easier to concentrate on a company if you think about it as if it were a person. I guess that didn’t matter now, what did matter was getting ahead on our opponents from a business-magickal point of view.
By the next FMCA update visual signatures will be the only accepted form of completion in any major acquisition. “Visual signatures” is a just a bureaucratic way to say sex tape. The way marriages between royal families ended wars in days of old. Now the newly betrothed offer up collateral that could damage them socially.
Joselyn leans over a black mirror lying flat on a round marble pedestal and whispers into it. A fog generates on the surface of the mirror and plumes into smoke. As she hissed the end of her sentence, the essence of whatever incantation she was reciting materialized, and bestrewed through the room out of the tips her spreading fingers. The lights dimmed themselves.
“New toy?” Morgen asks.
“My friend John’s mirror. Made from Aztec obsidian.” Joselyn says.
Morgen squinted in a playful way. She says, “At Han’s request?”
“A gift for myself. This is one of those truly rare devices.”
Looking into the mirror I expected it to suddenly spring to life with light like a phone display. That my reflection would be wiped clean from view and from my mind. But it didn’t. It stayed, as if my reflection was taunting me. And I became aware of the anxiety that was inherently in my body. And I stayed with it, I did not run away. I made deep eye contact with myself and ever gently, the anxiety melted away like ice under a cold sun. I saw myself for the first time in many, many years.
The giving over of the life partner to the shaman was the currency in tribal times. Pagan magic is much more celebrated because it was developed with the least amount of knowledge, meaning it is the purest. The most undiluted but most chaotic, for logic has not yet tainted it.
Although terms were drawn up the signature wasn’t allowed to be laid down without the box checked above.
The empty box had a blank line beside it was:
[insert ritual name here]
Joselyn took the official document from me and filled in the blank with “Betrothal (surrogate)”.
She pointed at “surrogate” and says, “That’s you.”
Soon names will be paraphernalia. People will trade names. Mixing and matching looks with different names. Until the perfect combination is achieved in the same way a key has all the right ridges.
Look at the edge of Joselyn’s naked body. Look at the tattoos of outdated math symbols all over her stomach, ass, and thighs. A triangle within a circle within a square tattooed over her uterus.
I’m starting to feel that Morgen doesn’t want a baby. She just wants a guy who will fuck on camera.
To go on the record by getting recorded on behalf of the kingdom. The company. The family. I’m a private fuck doll for the pageantry of conducting business. But what makes this objectifying lifestyle worth it? My salary…well…is exactly what Les said, “The limit does not exist.” And now that mom and dad are dead there’s no shame left. All because I was too distracted to fill out my dating app profile.
I can hear bath water running.
My mind feels like it’s in space.
Joselyn lays on her back and all of the anxiety I just described drains out of me. She holds her legs back, hooking her forearms around the back of her legs. And looks over at me.
“Begin.” She says. And my body moved as if I didn’t have a say in the matter.
For DPZ, Everhet was the only one doing stuff with partners. I just did stuff to myself. And this is harder than it looks so I just went with what I knew.
I held my piece in my hand slapping it like a stack of cash from the bank right on her clit.
“You want that dick baby?” I said in a weird moany voice that was totally unnatural.
“Don’t do that.” She says. With her calf muscles next to her ears, she still maintained the ability to scold and command respect. “This is serious.”
“Okay.” I say, “Sorry.”
“Just put it in, then when I say it’s time for the second degree, I want you to put it in my nethermost. Gently.”
I look over at Morgen, who I noticed was looking at me from the corner of my eye, she mouths, “Her asshole.”
And I’m like, “Bu-what?”
Then I clumsily fell forward centimeters and I couldn’t stop myself from falling all the way into her garden.
It took much restraint, but I gathered my composure to have somewhat of a control on my rhythm so that I looked a little bit more like someone having sex, and a little less like having a seizure on top of someone. And I don’t think she really liked having our faces so close together, so I took over the duties of her forearms, and held her legs back for her. I am a gentleman.
Keyword: gentle.
Joselyn’s toenails are painted the color of the moon.
Still on her back, she uses her feet to push on my chest and I was pinning down the back of her thighs, until we made some compromise with the force we applied toward each other.
She scootches back a little for me to take the hint and slip out. Then gets up. We take a short intermission for Joselyn to adjust the lighting for the video. After checking the playback she says her head was cut off in all the shots.
She grabs her remote with light triggers and starts adjusting stuff.
So while they figured out settings I flipped through some more of her books.
It’s like finding your dad’s porn collection in fifteenth century France.
500 years ago, pornography would land you in prison. And with the next FMCA that type of exciting risk will no longer be achievable. That’s infinite loop logic. I try to soak up the stimulation because after the next FMCA passes it will be legal, and the extra hit of danger will be gone.
Morgen sat on the edge of the bed with me while Joselyn performed a moon bath ritual.
Her tub was the same green color as Morgen’s nails.
The room smelled of citrus and lavender with a tangy, thick humidity that has a trace of almond flavor.
“The lunar eclipse in Sagittarius requires it from her.” Morgen says without looking up from her device, “Don’t worry she’ll be right back.” She says it in a don’t-feel-bad type of way.
One of the books has prints of engravings depicting lascivious doings of all kinds.
I pick up an original sketch of Sade’s proposed Temple of Venus.
Medieval pornographers were men writing sexually about women for other men as a form of male bonding. Maybe that’s why there’s no feeling of brotherhood anymore.
There are some people who think pornography in its literature form is the strongest most compelling propaganda. A type of advertisement that bypasses the cynical defense-against-capitalism filters and gets implanted in your memory like a microchip. I still remember all those URLs I punched into my keyboard like spells. Invoking pleasure. There’s nothing more exciting than looking at something you’re not supposed to. It numbs the mind for a short window. Then gradually falls away like a brushstroke.
I’m looking at a clergy man using his hard papal dong to deliver spankings to a healthy French women’s asscheeks. Its caption read: “The Voluptuary Father Dirrag whipping Mademoiselle Eradice.” From Thérèse philosophe. With a handwritten note in pencil in the margins, the note said (it’s pronounced: tierl-ress fi-law-soaf). They always show the cheeks but never the actual asshole, which I found weird.
The bath water’s rumbling comes to a stop.
Everhet was convinced that tattooed woman of a promiscuous nature were intent on infecting the masses through hidden images in their pornography. He once warned me to pay attention to tattoos on adult actors’ bodies. He said, “Most of theses chicks are satanists, and their tattoos show who their pimps are. Some of these women think that their pimp is the devil.”
When I brought that up to Morgen once she said, “There is no devil. That’s the saddest part. They’re the loneliest people in the world and invented their own slave master.”
And I thought about what it must be like to be Morgen, more people work and live in her domicile than family members. It’s not a home; With an empire that big, she lives at work.
Morgen’s eyes are at half-mast. She shows me she’s intrigued with her eyebrows, then looks down at my naked bottom half. And for a second I think maybe she’ll touch it.
The bellowing-gurgle sound of the water draining from Joselyn’s bath breaks Morgen’s concentration.
I told myself that the day I can’t get off will be the day that I die. The day your dong fails to stand up you feel like you’re walking around with a limp. A gimp leg but one that arouses less pity. Similar to man without a spine. That’s how it feels, at least. But today is not that day.
I know I’m really turned on when I’m getting the right amount of attention and the right amount of being ignored. That’s why doggy style is the perfect sexual position.
Joselyn comes back in the room and crawls toward me, then turns around, crawls in reverse then backs up until the inside of her knees are touching the outside of mine. Her garden and compost presented.
I know how to make PPL the best site ever. It will be a hub of not only pornographic VCOs, but all VCOs. We can trade them digitally. It will be its own economy.
Since I have not been instructed otherwise, I return to the garden.
I rock my hips forward as I watch her shoulder blades tense and relax. In the mirror I see her breasts leap like fawns. Tense. And relax.
I stopped trying to remember what I’d seen in videos. Quit focusing on what I think I should do and focus on what feels good while also listening for my queue.
Tense. And relax. And tense. And relax.
Tense. Relax. Tense.
Relax.
She says, “Okay…okay it’s time for the second degree.”
I slide back and pop out of her.
She reaches for the rolling side table. A diamond and gem-encrusted book cart from the library in Alexandria. She grabs a travel size tube of peach-flavored water-based lubricant.
She spread her knees out wide as she pushes herself backwards on to me.
On the walk to Joselyn’s cabin, Morgen told me the origin story of the ritual we were currently performing.
Historically, the person seeking supernatural help would need to pay with something valuable. The life of your first-born child or life partner would be taken. But seemed quite extreme to modern families. Now, it’s nothing if you’re going to be true to your word. Filming your husband copulate with a business partner was the only way to complete an honest merger.
There are no curses anymore. Only results. Bad luck at the worst.
Still in the garden. Paying attention to the sounds our bodies are making.
Cu-click. Cu-click. Cu-click.
Cha-ching. Cha-ching. Cha-ching.
“Okay.” Joselyn says repeatedly through panting. Then she says, “Almost there. Almost time. Get ready. Are you ready?”
I recite my lines extra loud for the camera.
I say, “Yes, Joselyn LeFaye. I, Sullivan Defoe am ready.” Which was weird to say aloud
“Okay. Oh my God. Oh shit.” Her arms give out and she lays them flat in front of her and lands her face and breasts on the bed with her ass straight in the air. Everything is triangles.
She voluntarily smothered herself in the sheets burying her head.
“Send it.” She shouts, “Commit!”
I slide my thumb into her asshole.
I’m supposed to hold this position until she gives direction. But after like two minutes I started to get worried. Two minutes with your thumb in a woman’s asshole feels like two years.
So I push in a little deeper. And she croaks a groan that sounded like a complaint. Probably because that’s the signal.
I keep telling myself that her asshole is probably famished for penises, and I’m a good person for doing this, and she’s getting more out of this than me.
Like Indiana Jones and the golden idol with the sandbag right before the boulder chases him, I replace my thumb with my penis.
Raidingtheark.com wouldn’t be the worst name I’ve ever heard for a site.
Balance must be maintained in order to please the celestial powers Joselyn is calling upon with this ritual. This recording is sort of like a visual consecration to the gods. Our secret handshake with heaven. But there really was some sort of supernatural thing about it. The noises we both were making did not sound of our own. I started muttering in Italian at one point and I don’t even know Italian. My eyes rolled back involuntarily. I tried not to think of black holes.
We were in a separate space of reality.
My soul is a ship on a vengeful sea, unreal and floating out of my body like a hot air balloon up into the sky and Joselyn’s asshole is keeping me anchored to this planet. She speaks like a NASA launch director during countdown, “Oh please. Oh fuck. Oh shit. Oh fuck. My ass. Oh fuck my ass. Oh fuck. My ass.”
This is not as sexy as I thought it would be. The only way not to think about possible having shit on my dick was to hyper focus on the pleasure.
I pounded away on Joselyn’s asshole and her back shimmered with lavender sweat. And she closed her eyes as if she were meditating. Astrally projecting out of her body to another place. She was twerking on autopilot.
In the same way your mom rubbed your back while you were falling asleep. That’s what my dong was doing for Joselyn; I was rubbing her back, from the inside. Picture: a penis playing the xylophone.
Internalmassage.com wouldn’t be the worst name for a site I’ve ever heard.
Now I’m supposed to play the part of the completionist and finish as soon as possible.
With the long walk over I was able to produce a source of inspiration to get into character for this scene.
I love Morgen the same way I love money.
I look in a mirror in the corner and I see Morgen on her device.
Me having sex with someone else isn’t a worry of hers. Which stings a bit, but she assured me that that’s just my ego. Since Joselyn’s returned from her bath Morgen’s been on her phone just swiping left and right.
Right. And right. Left. And right.
And I felt a detachment happen.
Like a red leaf, in the Fall, being plucked free by the wind and falling from a tree. I fill Joselyn’s butthole like an eclair. Equal parts pleasure and shame, I exhale deeply.
I pulled away from her.
Using a thousand voices at once, from somewhere outside this plane of reality, Joselyn says, “It is complete.”
James Jacob Hatfield is a displaced engineer, a painter, and many other contradictions. His work has appeared in X-R-A-Y, Maudlin House, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Barely South Review, Chaleur Magazine, Havik, and others. His ekphrasis poem “torrents of lahar, No. 36” was anthologized by the North Carolina Museum of Art. He is a Sterling Fellow and a Weymouth Fellow. He is the creator and curator of the Gemini Sessions Substack. He lives in Durham, NC.
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